Fed Survey Shows 73 Percent of Adults Doing Okay Financially

WASHINGTON, May 13, 2026 — The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System released its 13th annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking showing that 73 percent of adults described their financial situation as "doing okay" or "living comfortably."

The survey covers a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults and measures self-reported financial well-being, emergency preparedness, and material hardships. Per the report, the overall 73 percent figure remained stable compared with 2024 yet declined for young adults, low-income families, and Black adults.

Job-loss concerns rose to 42 percent of adults while 91 percent cited price increases as one of their top financial worries.

Sixty-three percent of adults said they could cover a $400 emergency expense entirely with cash or its equivalent, unchanged from the prior year. Twenty-six percent of adults reported skipping needed medical care because of the cost, down from 28 percent in 2024. The survey also found that 25 percent of workers used generative AI tools at work.

These figures carry direct implications for household spending patterns tracked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, for bank lending standards set by the Federal Reserve, and for fiscal policy decisions at the Treasury Department and in Congress. Monetary policymakers reference the SHED data when assessing the transmission of interest-rate changes to consumer behavior.

The stability in emergency-fund coverage indicates that the share of households vulnerable to sudden shocks has not improved despite nominal wage growth in recent years.

The 2025 edition marks the first SHED release since the Federal Reserve began its current rate-holding period that began in late 2024. Earlier editions showed the comfortable-or-okay share falling from a 2021 peak of 78 percent as inflation accelerated.

Congress has separately mandated the Federal Reserve to produce this annual survey under section 1003 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The report supplies primary-source inputs used by the Census Bureau for supplemental poverty measures, by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for rulemaking on credit access, and by the Labor Department when evaluating labor-market slack. No changes to survey methodology occurred between the 2024 and 2025 waves.